Two days.

That’s how long you currently have, Reader, to order you various delectable vegan Easter sweets from our friend Allison at Allison’s Gourmet and receive them by Easter Sunday.

Get to it!

Pictured: the Chocolate Rice Crispy Bunny + assorted Flavored Solid Chocolate Eggs (creamy dark, blackberry, + coconut).

And yes, clients, do expect a massive sugar crash to shut down the office shortly. Please plan accordingly.

Winter is coming, Reader.

No, no, I’m not referring to the inaccuracy of our meteorologically erring rodent friend, the groundhog. I’m referring to the return of the much-beloved fantasy series from HBO + producers/creators David Benioff + D. B. Weiss—Game of Thrones—and the words of the protagonist family, the Starks.

If you’re not familiar with the show—first off, congratulations on waking up from your coma/being freed from that North Korean prison—but, essentially all you need to know is that it’s a really awesome adaptation of über-nerd George RR Martin‘s sprawling fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin’s currently working on the sixth + penultimate installation in the series, but the last one clocked in at just over 1000 pages and took him six years to complete. So chances are, the televised adaptation is going to catch up to the original as it premieres its third season this Sunday (each season so far’s paralleled the stories covered in the books, though it might get a little tricky given the two most recent books).

If you’re not quite as nerdy as us and haven’t already re-watched season two in anticipation, chances are you’re in need of a re-cap.

Which is why we like The King’s Roadmap, a succinct + beautifully illustrated interactive map re-cap, developed by Direct TV. Visit the map and use your mouse or keyboard arrows to scroll through each episode as it’s broken down by geography with plot points.

Obviously, if you haven’t watched the show or aren’t quite up-to-date on the happenings up to the end of season two, WATCH OUT! SPOILER ALERTS, and all that jazz.

We’re told that the map will be updated as the new season progresses.

Below, the most recent trailer for season three. THAR BE DRAGONS!

Back at the end of January, when the Oxford, England math rock band, This Town Needs Guns released their long-awaited sophomore follow-up full-length to their superb 2009 album, Animals, I had two immediate thoughts: 1. I can’t wait to get this album, and; 2. What a shitty time to be in a band named This Town Needs Guns.

True, the band comes from a country that counted 58 gun deaths in 2011 (as opposed to 8,775 in the US’s most recent figuring, though Britain’s population is 62 million as opposed to our 314 million or so) and cops don’t even carry firearms in most cases. But in this digital age, when something someone Tweets in Djibouti can end up on the morning news in New York, it’s fair enough to say that a band today may find it useful to take more of a world view on certain things than a band formed in the early aughts, when This Town Needs Guns was formed.

It seems that the band agrees, announcing recently that they would be known only by the acronym TTNG. As they wrote on their site:

“Over the years, many of you have asked where the band name comes from. As a band originating in Oxford, UK, ‘This Town Needs Guns’ was simply a name chosen by a group of friends wanting to make music together. At the time, this name was not considered particularly offensive and indeed was an ironic statement given the setting of such a historic and cultural city as Oxford.

Context plays a big part in the way a band name such as ‘This Town Needs Guns’ may be perceived. In the UK, guns are not present. Ordinarily, our police force do not even carry guns. Within this context, an idea such as a town needing guns seems too absurd to be taken seriously.

However, eight years on, things have changed. With our music now finding new cultures, the irony of the name is no longer implicit. Also, in light of the controversy over gun ownership in the US as well as tragic shootings there and elsewhere in the world, we want to distance ourselves from a band name which we are now uncomfortable with.We hope this change of name doesn’t disappoint anyone. It is the music that is important, not the name. As Shakespeare’s Juliet said ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'”

Ending a press release with a Shakespeare quote—super-British.

While we’d opine that moving away from the original name makes sense from a sensitivity standpoint and in an effort to take into account the fact that the band and its ideas now extend well beyond their own immediate culture, we would have liked to see them adopt a totally new moniker if they were going to go that route. Now they’ll just have to constantly answer the question ‘What does TTNG stand for?” bringing them back to their original problem with the name and what’ll likely result in a tired explanation on their part. Plus it’s fun to name bands. Who doesn’t like the Band Name Game?

We’d also argue a more acute shift would be especially timely given that the band’s original singer, Stuart Smith, left the band to start a family before recording this most recent album. Following that, the band’s bassist, Jaime Cooper, stepped away as well, leaving the band to find a new singer—Henry Tremain—who ended up taking on bass-playing duties as well, though he evidently does so with a bass/baritone guitar hybrid to retain some of the band’s original dual-guitar melodies. The result—a three-piece consisting of Tremain (left, above), guitarist Tim Collis (right, above + the only remaining original member), and brother, Chris Collis on drums (middle).

I’ve always found it kind of odd when a band loses its frontman and soldiers on under the same brand, as it were. But one could easily maintain that Tim’s guitar-playing is the true defining sound of the band. Intricately melodic and inarguably evolved from the early 90s post-hardcore/indie sound (think American Football, et al), Collis’ guitar ranges from classically beautiful forlorn to staccato-rhythmicly aggressive and it drives the rest of the elements of the band’s songs.

The new album—the Mayan-end/beginning-of-the-world-themed 13.0.0.0.0—is an understandably different animal (pun, sadly, kind of intended), but one that shares the same roots of the band’s earlier work and pushes it further into new, exploratory directions.

Scroll down + listen to the superbly titled “Cat Fantastic”—a rhythmically complex but hauntingly engaging song seemingly about the pitfalls of dudes in bands trying to date posh women—to see what we mean.

You can listen to the full album, embedded below, and buy it + their back catalog via the band’s Hello Merch page and iTunes.

TTNG will be hitting our shores mid-April. They’ll be playing Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory May 2 + you can see their full tour dates on their site.

Photos by Tom Nero.

13.0.0.0.0 by This Town Needs Guns

Reader, two years ago, we finally found ourselves caught up in this thing you crazy sports fans call “March Madness.” As we wrote at the time, neither of us has ever been much of a basketball fan, but…well, we really don’t like being left out. Plus, the intricacies of devising intensely thought-out rankings of teams to culminate in a series of head-to-head battles visually represented by brackets appeals to our collective meticulous aesthetic nature.

You may or may not know this, Reader, but former Smiths frontman + legendarily doleful crooner Morrissey is quite the outspoken animal rights activist.

True, he’s quite outspoken on most things—including celebrity trash-talking—but the iconic singer has actually been a devoted vegetarian since was a wee lad in the suburbs of Manchester. And then there was the title track from The Smiths’ 1985 LP, “Meat is Murder,” Morrissey’s ongoing support of PETA, and this amazing, cat-approved print ad for his 2011 tour. True, the ad’s not really saying anything about animal rights, but I look for any and every opportunity to point out how awesome that is.

Finally, there was Morrissey’s recent attempt to have the Staples Center in LA go vegetarian for his show there at the beginning of this month…which, sadly, did not quite work out for the best. Pile onto that the cancelation of the remainder of his US tour due to health problems, and you’ve got some seriously bummed out fans, especially in the vegetarian circles.

But fear ye not, Reader! We here at Kindness of Ravens/raven + crow studio are here to help!

We hereby excitedly announce our sponsorship of At Last I Am Born: A Morrissey Birthday Celebration, featuring a live set by The Sons & Heirs, NYC’s tribute to The Smiths + Morrissey, DJ Matt Heart Spade on the turntables, a reading by Tony Fletcher, author of A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths, and a Smiths-inspired congregation of vegetarian food, fashion, culture, and fun, as curated by us.

Everything will kick off at 7PM on May 22 at The Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn—one of our favorite venues in the city.

We’ll be raffling off products and services from some of our favorite vegan + animal-friendly businesses (more on that later) and are working with The Bell House on some exciting vegan food options for the night.

We’re offering a discount on tickets to readers for a limited time—purchase your tickets by 8PM tomorrow night, and get $2 off the advance ticket price when using the code MEATISMURDER. Get your tickets here, and see you there, Reader!

Below, The Sons & Heirs performing their spot-on version of “This Charming Man.”

Twenty-three years ago, Carol Adams—writer, activist, graduate from Yale Divinity School, and then-sixteen-year vegetarian—published The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Though the mainstream reaction to the book was what you might have expected—Remember when you told your grandparents you were an anti-war, pro-choice vegetarian? Yeah, that—Washington Post Book World had this to say about Adams’ writing:

“A clearheaded scholar joins the ideas of two movements–vegetarianism and feminism–and turns them into a single coherent and moral theory. Her argument is rational and persuasive….New ground–whole acres of it–is broken by Adams.”

The book presented a new context in which to understand and fight against these related forms of oppression and that concept struck a chord with a whole new wave of activists waiting for a voice.

This month, Lantern Books publishes a new anthology that provides a fresh lens through which 21 of today’s activists + writers explore Adams’ themes. In Defiant Daughters, journalists, high school + college students, professors, non-profit leaders, foodies, musicians, and various other writers + activists share their personal stories on how their lives + work were shaped by Adams’ writing. The book—built in single-sitting bites—is smartly aimed at today’s short-attention span readers. But the most notable boon of the collection is the approachability of the stories told and ease with which readers are allowed to identify with its writers.

From a deftly told story detailing a young woman’s efforts in coming to terms with her own progressive thoughts amidst a strict Muslim upbringing; to a piece weighing the sexual politics of breast-feeding; to stories telling of how The Sexual Politics of Meat inspired the writers to explore their own strength + independence in their personal + professional lives; the book presents not only praise dependent on the original work, but also insular inspiration to readers through its narratives.

As Adams herself puts it in her the foreword she wrote for Defiant Daughters:

“A book changes our way of looking at the world, and everything else follows. By identifying some of the ways that the violence of the dominant culture impacts us and asserting that we aren’t powerless against it, The Sexual Politics of Meat helps readers think themselves toward new possibilities, new ways of living.”

I’d go further by saying that such a book does not only that, but also gives voice to those who can further this same message even more with their own stories of personal growth. Whether readers go to the root of this anthology to Adams’ original work or not, these stories inspire on their own and should be celebrated.

We took a little time to speak with one of the book’s contributors—Katy Otto, a Philly-based activist + musician who penned the piece It’s Not Like You Could Ever Actually Go Vegan. The stories examines Katy’s journey to become vegan and how it affected her personal relationships, her idea of feminism, and even how she approached music.

We spoke with her about the fundamental relationship between feminism + veganism, music that inspires her, and—of course—where to get good vegan food in Philly.

So, first off, how’d you get involved with this anthology?

I was thrilled to get an email from Kara Davis (managing Director at Lantern) asking if I was interested. I was. I had written Carol a fan letter of sorts at some point, and I think that might be how she had my name and knew of me.

Nice. The anthology presents itself as a collection of voices that bring the ideas behind Carol Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat to a new generation. Why is that something you and the other contributors think is especially important right now?

If the Steubenville rape trial and the kinds of backwards thinking about women’s lives, reproduction, and sexual assault coming out of the mouths of politicians are any indication, we still—and probably always will—desperately need feminism. I’ve never understood any kind of feminism that did not sit at the intersection of a broader, wider anti-oppression politic. Capitalism underscores much of this. Produce, consume, repeat. This book calls those widely held values into question and with authenticity. In this fast-paced age of instant gratification, I would maintain that any kind of interruption of the status quo is important. Defiant Daughters is most assuredly that.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, can you explain Adams’ term “absent referent”?

In the context of Carol Adams’ book, it is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product. It’s saying “steak” instead of “cow.” It’s insulation. In my essay, I use another example of an “absent referent” that is admittedly a bit jarring. When guys ask other guys if they “got any pussy.” What’s going on in this statement? Well, it is pretty similar to what happens when you call cow steak. You take away the real unique individuality and soul attached to an individual being—either an animal that may become your dinner, or a woman you may or may not have had sex with. The value assigned is in what YOU HAVE GOTTEN FROM THEM, not in their own inherent worth. They are a blank slate. It’s a pretty intense turn of phrase, and hard to grasp at first. It basically means that objectification and fragmentation has taken place in our language.

Well-put. See, I feel like it’d honestly be pretty difficult for most reasonable people to deny any relation between feminism + animal rights once the premise is laid out…I hope, at least. But what’s your response to those who are already working so hard in one field or the other and just feel overwhelmed when told that ignoring one of these forms of oppression is just as bad as turning a blind eye to the other?

None of us is or will ever be perfect. I certainly also hate when people lord their radical politics over others. If anything, these are politics we should be making more attractive and trying to invite people into more, and you honestly don’t do that by making people feel terrible. We are all often overwhelmed and exhausted. That is part of how and why oppression works. It keeps us at odds with one another and grasping for crumbs. It is very strategic to my way of thinking to look at how all of these oppressions interlock and overlap, because then you can really start to do significant damage to their foundation. And that is how and when a sea change will occur. But we have to do this while taking care of ourselves and each other. Most of us did not ask for this kind of a world. It can be hard to feel like we have any kind of hand in shaping something different. We have to celebrate small victories. We have to nourish ourselves to keep moving forward.

So do you find the opposite then in taking a holistic approach to social change, that it doesn’t overwhelm but helps to put things in perspective for you?

I think no matter what, you have to incorporate your politics into your life, your thinking, and how you walk through the world.

Looking back at my formative years, it’s pretty clear that both listening to and playing particulars kinds of music attracted me to a certain like mindset in people. Music is this kind of ever-present thing in our culture and it’s often the most easily accessible point of particular subcultures—like a gateway drug to deeper themes. I think it’s fair to say that there was this compulsion to an other in music for many of us—to what was underground before it was identified + commercialized by corporations in the early- to mid-90s—that was sometimes prompted by a larger aversion to the cultural mainstream but almost always resulted in further delving into other previously foreign aspects of our own culture. Like, I hear a Bikini Kill song and then by a split they do with Huggy Bear and then start to learn about the punk counter-culture here and overseas, which leads to learning about the politics behind the music, which just keeps leading me to all of these new thoughts and ideas and, thus, pulls me closer to other people on a similar road of exploration, like you write about in your story, It’s Not Like You Could Ever Actually Go Vegan. How did music + the oppression of animals and/or women relate for you in your personal experiences?

I constantly hunger for new ideas. I want to be challenged. I think changing the world will take Herculean effort and even greater creativity. Music is so perfect for this because it is both a place where you can challenge yourself and your audience, but also be in community. For many, this experience comes from church. For those of us with serious problems concerning institutional religion, having a home and gathering place is vital. The punk scene I grew up in was definitely that. I wonder in the era of the Internet if anything quite the same will ever exist again. I hope that community can grow out of this book, and I think it already has in the network that has been created among the contributors.

Very good point about the new musical culture. We’ve often talked about how it’s good or bad for musicians or consumers, but rarely in terms of the community music once created out in the non-Internet world. Were there any particular songs or lyrics that really spoke to you on the animal oppression front? I feel like it’s a little more acceptable to sing about feminism than it is to write songs that are overtly directed at animal welfare or veganism. Maybe the former just has more seniority in popular culture or it’s just easier to make the subject inherently personal, but it seems like it’s hard to sing about animals without coming off as preachy.

Heh. I kind of loved Earth Crisis. But that’s a little bit of a guilty pleasure. Gorilla Biscuits also has that awesome Cats and Dogs song!!!

Right. You actually write a little bit about your exposure to that same hardcore vegan/straight-edge scene—the one in which Earth Crisis is central and which also addresses animal rights in its songs + culture. What’s your take on the beliefs behind that scene’s approach or tactics though?

What a bummer. It’s kind of awful for me to even think about because men in that scene in particular captured my attention and affection at a younger age when I discovered this music, but then let me down so often and so repeatedly when it mattered. I was in a long-term relationship that became abusive with someone who identified as vegan hardcore/straight-edge. I don’t think I am the only woman with that particular experience, either in the punk/hardcore community or in any radical subculture. What you say quickly becomes much less important to me than what you do.

Totally. So, this might be a totally inaccurate assumption made on the part of an out-of-touch guy in his late 30s, but it seems to me, at first blush, that most of the music today doesn’t hold a torch to the music of punk, riot grrrl, + indie bands of the 80s + 90s in terms of addressing social issues. I’m not going to be that guy who’s like, “There’s no good music anymore”—I LOVE music being made today. But do you think it’s a fair assessment to say it’s not as…challenging socially or mentally?

I think the internet has done a lot to lay to waste some of the great aspects of regionalism in music. It’s also hard for me to answer this fairly because I am 34 myself and have deep nostalgia for so much of what you are describing. I recognize there may be a lot I don’t know that is happening. But I certainly do wish I saw more radical, political music. The presence of that I do think has diminished as people are eager to plot their next soundcloud upload or YouTube video.

Well, who are some bands making music today that you think are both making great, creative, compelling music that also works to address issues bigger than, say, there being a party in the USA. Not to dog pile on Ms. Cyrus. She’s having a rough month, what with the social media fast and break-up rumors and tattoos and all.

Miley! Aw. I love: Gull, Forget Cassettes, Des Ark, Thou, Pygmy Lush, Hand Grenade Job, Questlove, War on Women, The Shondes, The Dropout Patrol, a stick and a stone, Burnt Books…. My band played a reunion with Catharsis recently, and that definitely brought back a lot of memories. Still, though, we do need more of this.

Did you follow the action and arrest of Pussy Riot closely? What was your reaction to all of that?

Pretty horrifying. War on Women—who are on my label Exotic Fever—played a really big rally in support of them, which The Nation was kind enough to cover. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, did a lot to share that story. It is shocking and terrible, but there are arrests in this country that are equally shocking and terrible – including the arrest and detention in a men’s prison of trans woman CeCe McDonald. Her case didn’t get near the outrage. You can read a bit about it here.

Do you feel like there are any important lessons we can take away from that in America?

We silence our artists and people differently here, but we do silence them. I am glad we are a country that has institutions like the American Civil Liberties Union who fight so diligently to uphold civil rights, but I have some serious concerns about backsliding around some of the defense of our civil liberties as greater and greater fear of the unknown and outside attack are popularized. We also give away a lot of our own information, privacy and freedom willingly to corporations through things like Facebook, Google, etc. It’s hard to be as vigilant in protecting radical thought as we should. That’s a lesson I take from Pussy Riot—to be thankful for the limited freedom of speech I do have and to remember that we must continue to fight to preserve it.

Well-said. Two quick final questions given your mutual love of Bikini Kill + living now in Philly—Favorite Bikini Kill song? And best place to eat vegan in Philly?
 
Vedge if you’re fancy; tofu hoagies if you are on the go. And for me? “Bloody Ice Cream”, always and forever. I got a thing for Sylvia and Kathleen.

Listen to Katy’s band—Trophy Wife—below with “Ariana’s Song”, which Katy says was “named after a young woman who passed before her time that was a camper at Girls Rock DC, which my bandmate helped found. I was a band coach for Ariana there. It’s about loss and mourning, but also about celebrating life as you do so.” You can hear more at Katy’s label, Exotic Fever, and on the band’s bandcamp page. 
 
Read up on Carol Adams’ game-changing book, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory on Adams’ site and find out more about Defiant Daughters on the book’s Facebook page—where you can find out about related events near you—and at Lantern Books—where you can order the 280-page paperback ($20). You can also purchase the e-book via Goodreads, Amazon, + iTunes. Katy will be reading in Philly with fellow contributor Sarah Brown on Friday, March 29 at Wooden Shoe Books + Records. 

In honor of Katy’s pick, this week’s Song is Bikini Kill‘s “Bloody Ice Cream” from their seminal Reject All American, which, if you don’t own, you really really really should.

sing what scares you by trophy wife

Dreaming of the California coast.

Star of HBO’s GIRLS + Brooklyn Heights Carroll Gardens resident Jemima Kirke on the cover of the Spring 2013 issue of Brooklyn Magazine. Cover photo by Jody Rogac.